“Austin.” Another tug on my bicep. “We’re done here. Snap out of it.” Morton scurries across the gravel drive to his rented Honda and throws himself into the driver’s seat. “You have got to stop doing that. It makes people think you’re a serial killer.”
“Doing what?” My own face heats at the thought that she read my thoughts. That winter fantasy was something else.
“Staring at other guys like you’re going to take a swing at them.”
“I never would.” I put a hand to my chest. “Violence is never the answer.”
“I could tell you were thinking about it.”
“I could tell he was thinking about being a dick to you.”
Brooke grins up at me and drops her hand away from my arm. “What’s it to you if he is?”
I draw myself up to my full height. “Nobody’s going to be an ass to a lady in my presence. Especially not about her dad.”
Brooke’s grin falters, but she gives a little laugh. “My dad would’ve hated Morton. But my dad also screwed up the payments on that policy. And he wrote a marriage clause into his will. He wasn’t a saint.”
“Neither was mine. A saint would have clued his sons in that they had an entire branch of the family across the country.” Frustration flares, the wolf at the back of my mind pawing the ground and baring his teeth. “A saint would have said something.”
Brooke stares at me, gray eyes locked on mine. “You never had any idea?”
“How would I have guessed?” The shell of her house is a hulking pile on the ground behind us. Someone needs to move it out so she can move on. If that someone isn’t going to be Montana Confidence, it’s going to be me. “Not a word. About his own brother. Luke can’t stay out of my damn business for five seconds, but I still can’t think of anything he’d do to make me hide him from the world.”
She snorts. “You hide everything from the world. I only know you have a brother because we both live in Paulson.”
“Do not. I’m an open book.”
“Please.” Brooke shivers like the winter’s already here. “I’ve seen you walk down the middle of the Riverbend with those cowboy boots on. The way you look dares everybody to talk to you.”
“I talk to Greg all the time.”
“Yeah, Greg the bartender. Can’t get much to drink unless you’re nice to Greg. I mean the rest of us. I’ve spent most of my life thinking you were some stone-faced asshole without a care in the world.”
“And now what? You think I’m a happy-faced asshole?” I give her a big, fake smile, and she laughs. The sound feels like sunshine on the beach and people splashing nearby. “Why aren’t you more upset by all this?”
“About your secret family? Well, Austin, I don’t know if you know this, but—”
“About the insurance company.”
“Oh, this?” She laughs again, and I hear the note of worry there at the fringes. “I’m upset, but if I keep smiling, then maybe it’ll turn out to be fake. If I smile pretty enough, maybe a cowboy will come bail me out of this mess.” She drags her fingertips across the front of my shirt, then straightens up. “Just kidding. I don’t want you to bail me out. I’ll fix it somehow. I’ll do that challenge thing he was talking about. I’ll write my very best letter. Everly will help me. Or I’ll just...do research. Like a grown woman. I’ll fix it. I’ll just—I’ll fix it. I can totally fix it. I will fix it.”
I take her by the shoulders and give her the gentlest shake. “Hey, Brooke.”
She’s breathing hard and fast, the smile looking scarier by the second. “Hey.”
“Listen, you can stay with me as long as you want.”
“No—I can’t. I can’t do that. Not for as long as this is going to take. I’ve gotta move out,” she says, mostly to herself.
“Why? You think I’m renting out the guest bedroom?”
“I think I could get used to it,” she blurts. “Your guest bedroom, I mean. The longer I stay, the harder it’ll be to leave. So I should do it soon.” Where is this coming from? “I should do it sooner rather than later. Tonight, even.”
“Scout’s honor, I will not fuck you in the stables anymore if that’s what this is about.” Every beat of my heart is a jangling alarm. “We can avoid that, easy.”
Brooke bites her lip. Then she turns on one heel, mumbling something as she turns toward the house, hand on her hip.
“What was that?”
“I said it was good,” she shouts. “You have a good penis. Is that what you want to hear? God, Austin, you push and push—”
“Thrust,” I say.
“Oh my god.” A giggle that’s more of a belly laugh shakes her from side to side, and I can’t help it—I put my hands on her hips and pull her back against me.
“Don’t get any ideas,” I say into the clean shampoo scent of her hair. “I’m not doing this to woo you.”
“Woo me?” Brooke laughs, but I can feel her melting into me, as sure as she did last night. “You could never do that. You’re a Bliss, and I’m a Carson.”
“You didn’t seem to care about that when I had you down in the straw.”
“Orgasms will do that to a girl,” she says, right out into the open air. “So many orgasms,” she says wistfully.
I take a subtle look around to see if my idiot brother is riding his horse up to us or creeping behind the burned-out building. We’re clear. I hook a thumb into the waistband of Brooke’s jeans. “See, here’s what I was thinking. I was thinking I’d get a bulldozer and come over here and...”
“Please do not refer to your penis as a bulldozer.” Brooke cracks the joke but she presses her ass back into me all the same.
Her zipper comes loose under my fingers. “A real bulldozer. Christ, Brooke, you have a dirty mind. I thought I’d come over here with a bulldozer and clear all this up so we can get started on the fixes.”
I work my fingers beneath her panties, the fabric of her jeans pressing my hand close. She pants, inching her legs apart. “I don’t—I don’t have money for any fixes. Didn’t you hear that guy? No insurance money—”
“We’re going to win the contest,” I whisper in her ear. “We’re going to win it so damn good. We’re going to get that billboard and that cash prize, and then you’ll have enough to get started on your house.”
“I’m not taking your money,” she breathes. “Oh, god, this is the worst dirty talk I’ve ever heard.”
“Then why are you so wet and breathless?”
“Because I—I like when you—do that.” I circle her clit again and she bucks against my palm. “This is dangerous, Austin, anybody could come by, your brother—”
“My brother will get what’s coming to him if he rides that horse up to us right now. Focus on the contest. We’re going to win. Everybody in town is going to be chanting our names. And then I’m going to hand you a big, fat....” I rub harder, faster, my cock straining against my pants. I stroke a finger over her slit and she groans, her weight coming down heavy on my arm. “Check,” I whisper, and Brooke comes on my fingers, crying out into the Montana sunshine.
She whirls around in my arms and takes my shirt in both fists. “Damn you, Austin.” Her face is red, eyes bright. “How could you do that?”
“Give you another orgasm? I’m not sorry I did.”
“Do that to me out here. Where there’s nowhere to—” I scoop her up in my arms and head around where the house used to be. “You have got to get out of this habit,” Brooke scolds. “You can’t just carry me everywhere you want me to be.”
“Can’t I?”
“Not on my own property.”
“Oh, I can, and I will. Especially on your own property.”
“There are rules, Austin,” she says urgently. “We need to have rules. We can’t spend all our time sleeping with each other when this’ll never—”
“Hush that mouth of yours. All this is cover for what you really want.” I kick open the door to her stable. It’s smaller than ours, and shabbier, but Miller
has kept it up. Fresh straw lines all of the empty stalls. There’s no time for a blanket now. This is going to be hard, and rough, and my body won’t stand for waiting any longer. “You want to see my dick, Brooke.”
I put her on her feet and she scrambles for her clothes, desperation in every movement. “You know what? I hate you.”
“You love me.”
“I love the things you can do with this.” She takes me in her hand and I step out of my own jeans, hooking my arm around her naked waist. “I’ll never admit to anything else.”
“We’ll see about that.”
Chapter Sixteen
Brooke
“Okay.” Austin rubs his palms together, gazing down over the big kitchen island like it’s his prey. “This is it. Vegetable crafts.”
“We’re not doing vegetable crafts.” It’s early on the morning of the final round of this harvest festival contest, and I still have no idea who’s behind it. Some mysterious sponsor who wants us to do ridiculous things, I guess. Well, ask and you shall receive, because here I am with Austin Bliss, getting ready to make dinner. “This is just cooking. Stop calling it that.”
“Vegetable crafts,” he whispers, and I give him a good-natured slap on his arm.
“Ouch.”
“Don’t slap my rock-hard guns and we won’t have a problem.” He finishes this with a sniff. What a....a goofball, honestly. For a guy who’s been stalking around Paulson all of his life acting like the Lone Ranger, he has a sweet side to him. Funny, despite how terrible his jokes are. “Did you bring everything we discussed?”
“Yes. I brought all the stuff over from the fridge. Just like we discussed.” A smile plays around the corners of my mouth, tempting me. I could laugh. I could break down in a fit of giggles and fall against him, using those rock-hard biceps to break my fall. But then we’d end up in bed. I cannot keep doing that. It makes my heart feel all strange and warm. It makes me feel like I belong here, and I don’t. I’ll never really belong on Bliss Ranch. Not when my own house is calling me to fix it up. It’s calling Austin, too, but that’s because he can’t leave well enough alone. Or burned-out buildings alone, apparently. “It’s all here.”
We stayed up late last night making a list of Paulson-inspired foods, then split up to go to the supermarket that opened the earliest for some baking staples. The backs of my hands feel permanently goose-bumped. A lot is riding on this, and to Austin it’s all vegetable crafts. Beginning with a pumpkin pie. If it turns out, the pie will have a section of crust in the shape of Montana dead center on the top. The best of Austin’s early pumpkins sits smack-dab in the center of the kitchen table, awaiting its fate.
“You’re right.” He hovers his hand over the mess of ingredients on the table. “We haven’t left anything out, I don’t think.”
“Great.” A yawn steals out of my mouth and I cover it with my palm. “Let’s make dinner.”
“Awww,” says Austin. “It’s just like playing—”
“Don’t.” I hold up a hand. “Don’t say it.”
“—house with the sweetest girl in all of Paulson.”
* * *
Three hours and two more trips to the store later, we’re making progress. The food has to be done, but none of it can be hot enough to burn anybody at the final round. Austin pulls the pie out of the oven and the scent of it hits me all over again. Cinnamon and cloves steam through the air.
“I’ll be damned,” Austin murmurs, cradling the pie and breathing it in deep. My mouth waters at the sight of him in a pair of jaunty blue oven mitts. They bring out his eyes, and then some.
“You’re not...surprised by the pie, are you? Because we spent an hour putting it together.” I spent twenty minutes tracing the western border, making sure it was perfect. The rest of our state is a rectangle. That makes the ridges to the west even more crucial for our representation. As a final touch, I traced a tiny X at Paulson’s location on the map and put a faint dot of blue food coloring in the center.
Austin is still staring reverently down at the pie in his hands. “I read once that pumpkin pie is an aphrodisiac.”
“You shut your mouth, Austin Bliss.” I laugh out loud, but he’s not laughing. This is serious. “Oh my god. You did not get an erection from a pumpkin pie.”
“Can I be honest with you?” He flicks his eyes up to meet mine and I get a jolt from it. Of course I do.
“No. You can’t. Pumpkin pie? That’s not right.”
“It might be from the pie. But it also might be from when you bent down to check the crust when it was in the oven.”
“You’re a perv.”
“I’m just a man,” Austin says long-sufferingly, then does a little move with his hips.
“Don’t do that!” I’ve leaped forward in spite of myself, hands outstretched. “We don’t have time to make another one. And it’s already—” I check the time on the oven. “We’re running out of time to get this all done and over to the barn. Come on, Austin. Stop making love to the pie and put it down.” My heart is ready to throat-punch me from the inside. “I’m serious—put the pie down.”
Austin takes a careful step toward the counter, tossing me a look. “I’m putting it down. See? No need to worry.”
“Don’t coax me.” The ceramic pie pan makes contact with the counter and I let out a heavy sigh. “I hate being coaxed.”
“My mistake.” He strips off his oven mitts and tosses them to the counter, narrowly missing the pie. “I know you. You’d much rather be cocked.”
“Ew. That’s the best thing you could—” He wraps an arm around my waist, movements quick and graceful, and I feel like I could achieve liftoff. “What are you doing?”
“You’re nervous about the big contest tonight, and rightfully so. But I have the perfect solution.”
I wriggle against his arm, not willing to admit out loud or even in my brain how much I like his arm like an iron bar across the small of my back. Who have I become? A woman whose core heats up like a brand-new furnace whenever Austin touches me. “If this is the same solution you had yesterday—”
“I can’t recall,” he says haughtily. “What happened yesterday? Was it when I made you come in the driveway while the sun rose in our big Montana sky? I can do that again.”
He’s got my jeans unzipped in a flutter of my eyelashes and I twist away from his hand. I will never, I repeat never, admit that the sole purpose of this motion is to feel his muscles behind me. It also gives him freer access to my pants. “You shouldn’t,” I murmur. “We’re in the kitchen.”
“Let’s go out on the driveway, then. Anything to make my lady more comfortable.”
My lady rocks its way up the length of my spine and sends heat spreading across my cheeks. “I’m not your lady.”
He takes in a breath and it presses his iron-hard cock against me. He was not kidding about the pumpkin pie. There’s no way my weird crouch to look through the oven door got him like this. “But you could be.”
Everything in my brain grinds to a halt. Total shutdown. Electrical failure. Smoke should begin rising any minute now, and it’ll probably take down this house, too. “What did you just say?”
“You could be my lady, if you wanted.” His fingers play at the waistband of my panties and desire like fireworks bursts and blooms against my skin and deeper. It’s in my blood, beating along side a nagging fear that nips at the edges of pleasure. “It might not be so bad.”
“Don’t say that,” I whisper.
“Right. You like that other talk. I’m going to hire a bulldozer—”
I’m too drunk on his touch, on the feeling of letting myself go for a hot minute. “Please. Don’t make me—don’t make me do that again. A woman shouldn’t have to get off on bulldozers.”
“But it’s so damn pretty when you do. I’d love to see it one more time. At least one more time. One more time minimum.”
“Austin—”
“It’s going to be so big and strong,” he murmurs. “I’m going
to drive it over your front yard, toward that pile of wood, and I’m going to clear it down to the foundation. Everything’s going to be clean and new. And then I’m going to strip off my shirt—”
“This is the worst.” I can hardly get the words out. There’s not enough air on the entire planet. “You are the worst.”
“Don’t be ashamed of what you like.” His voice rolls over me like a peal of thunder and his fingers delve lower, spreading me, stroking me. “You like hearing me talk about all that construction work.”
“A bulldozer isn’t construction,” I gasp, and he presses two fingers to my clit.
“No, the construction’s going to come later. Picture me, shirtless, up on a scaffold, hammering nails into place. Bang, bang, bang...” With each bang he circles my clit. I grab at his wrist. I don’t want him to stop. I just want to feel him working for it. Maybe he’s right. Maybe my kink is Austin Bliss doing manual labor. “And it doesn’t have to be a house. It could be anything you want. A store for your own little farmer’s market. A new barn. Anything. You can stay here forever, if you want.”
I can’t stay. I also can’t say it out loud. I can’t, I can’t. The pleasure has built to a level so strong that Austin’s arm is all that’s keeping me from falling to the floor. “I—”
“That’s right. Come for me.”
And god help me, I do.
When it’s over I turn to face him, draping my arms around his neck, resting the weight of me on his broad shoulders. “Come to bed.”
Austin runs his hands up and down my waist. It’s so intimate and possessive that it gets me going all over again. “Later.”
Never the Cowboy’s Bride Page 10